So, I'm playing the site mess right now, and I've hit something of a wall. I've made it through a bunch of different places, found some video tapes and solved some puzzles, but I found myself the entire time thinking about the experiences I could be having with other games. It's not that I dislike the latest outing from Jonathan Blow, I really like it. It's beautiful, challenging, mysterious, and well made. I just can't help but consider all the other things I could be doing other than slamming my head against a wall and wandering around in frustration only to be rewarded by often what is a similar or more challenging puzzles.

With other games still on my list to spend more time with, and while I'm sure I'll go back to The Witness again and again, It's just not the type of game I can start-to-finish in the same way I've done with so many other games in the past.

I can't help but feel like that's intentional. There's something to this game that makes me feel like the will of Blow is being pushed on me. Not that I don't agree with some of the philosophy posed by the title in it's discoverable videos throughout it's lonely island, I can't help but feel like there's a voice behind each of the puzzles, crying out to me to be not just understood, but agreed with.

While I think that the medium in general benefits from games asking more questions of their players and of society as a whole, when the only other thing to do in a game about connecting dots, is to watch videos that are all seem to begging you to be saying "Hey, look at this video I found! Isn't it important?" and while I'm perpetually intrigued by the things the game has shown me, I worry that I'm experiencing messages imbued with a pseudo intelligence that isn't more than surface level deep.

I look forward to coming back to this game, but for right now, I ain't got time for this.